Chapter VI: Part 6

Giving him the full benefit of this difference, the fact remains that in other respects he treats his subject just as they treat theirs. He, a pious Christian, professing unbounded adoration and awe of his Divinity, coolly analyses and makes riddles of and dissects this Divinity as if it were a sample of air, a certain number, a dead body. This humble-minded devotee, who knows so well that he is finite and that God is infinite, and that the finite cannot conceive, much less comprehend, much less express the infinite, yet expounds this Infinite with the most complete and complacent knowledge, turns it inside out and upside down, tells us all about it, cuts it up into three parts, and then glues it together again with a glue that has the tenacity of atrocious wrongheadeduess instead of the coherence of logic, puts his mark upon it, and says, “This is the only genuine thing in the God line. If you are taken in by any other, why, go and be damned;” and having done all this, finishes by chanting “Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost!” And the pious are not shocked by what they should abhor as horrible sacrilege and blasphemy; they are shocked only by the “Go, and be damned,” which is the prologue and epilogue of the blasphemy. Were the damnatory clauses omitted, it appears that even the most devout worshippers could comfortably chant the “Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost” immediately after they had been thus degrading Father, Son, and Holy Ghost to the level and beneath the level of their low human understanding. And these very people are horrified by the lack of veneration in Atheists and infidels! What infidel ever dealt with God more contemptuously and blasphemously than this creed has dealt with him? Can it be expected that sane and sensible men, who have out-grown the prejudices sucked in with their mothers’ milk, will be reconverted to reverence a Deity whom his votaries dare to treat in this fashion?

Ere we conclude, it may be as well to anticipate a probable objection. It may likely enough be urged that the author and reciters cf the creed do not pretend to know the Deity so thoroughly as we have assumed, since they avouch very early in the creed that the three persons of the Godhead are one and all incomprehensible. If the word incomprehensible, thus used, means (what it apparently meant in the author’s mind) unlimited as to extension, just as the word eternal means unlimited as to time, the objection is altogether wide of the mark.. But even if the word incomprehensible be taken to mean (what it apparently means in the minds of most people who use the creed) beyond the comprehension or capacity of the human intellect, still the objection is without force. For in the same sense a tuft of grass, a stone, anything and everything in the world is beyond the capacity of the human intellect: the roots of a tuft of grass strike as deeply into the incomprehensible as the mysteries of the Deity. Relatively this creed tells us quite as much about God as ever the profoundest botanist can tell us about the grass; in fact, it tells relatively more, for it implies a knowledge of the _Final Cause_ of the subsistence of God, which no future botanist can tell or imply of the grass.

OUR OBSTRUCTIONS

(1877.)

Walking along the Strand and Fleet Street and through the heart of the City, noting the churches on the way—high St. Martin’s, St. Mary-le-Strand, St. Clement Danes, the Cathedral, and the many still left wedged in by offices in the narrowest and busiest streets, or lanes of London—I am always reminded of the old wooden ships laid up “in ordinary,” as one sees them at Plymouth and Portsmouth, and elsewhere. The churches, like the ships, though not so surely, may have done good service in their time; but their day is past, never to return. When we reflect on the subject, however, we find manifold differences between the state of the churches and that of the ships. These are dismantled, unrigged and dismasted, passive white hulls ghostly on the waters, as it were the phantoms of the old swift-winged and thunder-striking eagles of battle. But the churches remain in all their pride, complete in equipment from lowest vault to topmost spire, even those which are shut silent all the week, without the least pretence of use, and in which on Sunday the droning and drowsy worship of a meagre congregation “rattles like a withered kernel in a large shell.” Again, the crews of the ships were discharged as soon as these were put out of commission, while the full crews of the churches, rectors, vicars, ushers, beadles, are kept on at full pay, and saunter through the old exercises and parades as if they were valiant effectives instead of dummies and shams. And this death-in-life of the churches is more dreary and doleful than the naked death of the ships.

These churches officially and effetely represent what is called the English Reformation, the most ignoble in Europe; which, as Macaulay remarks, merely transferred the full cup from the hand of the Pope to the hand of the King, spilling as little,as possible by the way. It is true that the State Church thus established, in spite of its illogical position, boasted great men in its early days, inspired by patriotism as against Rome, with abounding faith for the mysteries, with firm belief in the Bible, with full confidence in metaphysical divinity. But now Rome is formidable no longer, the mysteries are seen to be not only incomprehensible but self-contradictory, the Bible has been torn asunder by criticism, metaphysical divinity has been proved baseless; all the best thought of the age abandons the Church and disregards its dogmas; it has great men no more, nor ever again will have. Its general character is well hit off by Ruskin, himself a devoted Christian, in the phrase “the smooth proprieties of lowland Protestantism.”’ It may be worth while to quote a little more from him on this subject (“Modern Painters,” part v., chap. 20, “The Mountain Glory”)—“But still the large aspect of the matter is always, among Protestants, that formalism, respectability, orthodoxy, caution and propriety, live by the slow stream that encircles the lowland abbey or cathedral; and that enthusiasm, poverty, vital faith and audacity of conduct, characterise the pastor dwelling by the torrent side.” And again: “Among the fair arable lands of England and Belgium extends an orthodox Protestantism or Catholicism—prosperous, creditable and drowsy; but it is among the purple moors of the highland border, the ravines of Mount Genévre, and the crags of the Tyrol, that we shall find the simplest evangelical faith and the purest Romanist practice.” In other words, in religion the highlander is enthusiastic and superstitious, the low-lander lukewarm and worldly. Thus our fat English Church still keeps to the text, “By grace ye are saved;” but its grace now is chiefly of deportment. It boasts that its clergy are gentlemen; and they may be, as a rule, in society, though we unbelievers seldom find them so in controversy; and it seems to be persuaded that we should continue to allow it several million pounds a year to keep up this supply of gentlemen, when every profession, every trade shows gentlemen quite as good, with the advantages of more intellect, more experience of life, more courage and more sincerity.

There is indeed a section of the clergy full of zeal—to restore the priesthood. How some of these gentlemen compound with their consciences in taking English pay and position for doing Romish work, is a standing puzzle to honest laymen untrained in casuistry. But as they do rank themselves among the parsons of our State Church, their ecclesiastical pretensions are even more ludicrous than they are outrageously arrogant. For ever preaching up the authority and discipline of the Church, they are the first to rebel against it when it does not suit their whims. Thus Mr. Tooth, of Hatcham, not only defies an Act of Parliament, but also defies his bishop, and has plenty of abettors in doing both. I read in the _Daily News_: “Two of Mr. Tooth’s supporters, whose letters we have published, insist that the Public Worship Regulation Act is not law and is not binding on Churchmen, because it has never received the sanction of Convocation”—the said Convocation having about as much influence and authority in the country as a tavern discussion society.

Again: “One writer talks of the Church having been declared to be free from all civil jurisdiction in spiritual affairs by many successive Sovereigns. We did not know that our Sovereigns had a right to make laws by Royal declarations, [and] not merely for their own time, but for all time. According to these principles of constitutional government we have three rival law-making powers in England—the Parliament, with the Sovereign for one; the Declaration of the Sovereign for another; and Convocation for a third. Of these Parliament would seem to be the weakest, for it cannot negative the proceedings of the other two; but either of these two can declare invalid what it has done.” Can anything be more absurd? Here is a State Church established by Parliament with the sanction of the monarch, endowed with national endowments, liable to be disestablished and disendowed by Parliament with the sanction of the monarch; yet many of its ministers claim to be free from the authority of the State and Parliament to which it owes its existence and subsistence! If they really desire such freedom, they can easily obtain it. They have but to sever their adulterous connexion with the State, restoring to the nation the endowments they have so long misused, and they will then be emancipated from all control, at liberty to teach what doctrines and practise what ritual they please. But these super-spiritual clergy keep a desperate clutch on the revenues. If anything could be more absurd than the defiance of Parliament, it would be the defiance of their ecclesiastical superiors by these champions of absolute ecclesiastical subordination. His bishop inhibits Mr. Tooth, Mr. Tooth coolly disregards the inhibition, and one who sympathises with him calmly writes to the _Daily News_? “Considering how bishops have been appointed since the Reformation, it is hard to see why Mr. Tooth and your correspondents should even pretend to obey them.” This is frightful, and may well make even the hardened sceptic shudder. What! a genuine successor of the Apostles (else the English Church has no genuine priesthood) chosen by the Holy Ghost itself (in obedience to the recommendation of the King or Queen) against his own humble wish (for he declared _Nolo Episcopari_); and English Churchmen need not even pretend to obey him! Such is the subordination of those who maintain the extreme authority of the Church!

Jesus has told us that a house divided against itself cannot stand, and the house of our State Church is divided against itself most savagely. But as the factions, while opposed to each other in all else, thoroughly agree in adhering to their endowments and privileges, and with this object shore up and buttress the edifice whose fall would be otherwise imminent, it behoves us to exert ourselves in bringing to the ground as speedily as possible the unsure and dangerous building, and diverting the immense funds misemployed in sustaining its uselessness to the real edification of the people. For as materially the Church of St. Mary is planted silent, void and death-like in the midst of the living currents of the Strand, obstructing and breaking the broad stream into two narrow arms, so intellectually and morally, in whatever channel our active life may flow, we find a similar obstacle, and in all directions we meet one cry—“The Church stops the way.”

But when we have removed the obstacle, when we have blasted it as the Americans recently blasted that other rock of Hell-gate, clearing the entrance to New York’s noble harbor, we shall find another and a more inveterate obstacle fronting us—a Book. A book seems but a slight thing to bar the way; but multiplied by millions and millions, and desperately defended as divine and infallible by legions of zealots, it constitutes a far more formidable barricade than the stoutest church of stone. The various sects of Nonconformists, who all join with us in attacking the State Church, will all join the Churchmen to maintain against us their common fetish, the Bible. Regarding this as a human production, there is much of it which we highly esteem; but regarded as the word of God, it works far more evil than good, and the evil is ever increasing while the good decreases; for the revelations of science grow ever more clear, and men must more and more strain their consciences and sophisticate their intellects in order to believe that they believe in the super-human character of the book which reason and science show to be so thoroughly human. We are told by men whom we respect that, considered historically, Christianity and the other great religions merit better treatment than we are wont to accord them. Certainly they merit better treatment than is accorded them by those who crudely brand them all alike, in all their doctrines and legends and ritual, as the mere inventions of priestcraft fostered by kingcraft and statecraft. But we are far from committing ourselves to such an impeachment, not less monstrous than the most monstrous superstition it assails. We freely recognise the naturalness of these religions in the past, their genuine consonance with the communities wherein they arose and prevailed; the sincerity and truth and nobleness formulated, however erroneously, in many of their dogmas, embodied, however imperfectly, in many of their myths; but we see that their day is gone by; we cannot allow the past, which was the real childhood and youth of mankind, to dominate the present, which is its riper age; we discern that the errors of the dogmas and the fiction of the myths are now so obvious and incontestable that to revere them as faultless and authentic is a gross self-delusion. When we say—“The tree is dead; cut it down, why cumbereth it the ground?” we do not imply that it never bore good fruit. On the other hand, when we admit that it once bore good fruit, we do not imply that it is not now dead and an encumbrance to the ground. It is precisely because we do consider these old faiths historically, because we fully recognise their early efficiency and vigor, that we can thoroughly realise their decrepitude and dissolution. And taking western Christianity in particular, both the Roman embodied in Mary and the Protestant embodied in Jesus, we affirm that it has no longer real life, but only the “ghastly affectation of life.” Reason and science have disembowelled it, have removed its heart and its brain. It is ready for the historical embalmer. Its great part in the drama of human life is played out; it is still kept above ground, its life still asserted, because large numbers would lose much by the frank acknowledgement of its decease, and other large numbers who cannot bring themselves to face the fact of its death, persist in hoping against hope that the lifelessness is hut a swoon or a cataleptic fit, from which it will yet awaken with renewed strength. We, however, dare to see what we cannot help seeing, we venture to avow the fact which is beyond fair dispute. Doubtless the living man did brave work in his time; but shall we therefore bow down worshipping his mummy, and keep it from its sepulchre, and continue to allot immense revenues to his army of servitors who have now no service to render? No; the sooner we bury the corpse and send the servitors about their business the better for us and for them.

Thus far I think all Secularists will go with me. But for many, perhaps the majority of us, who are not only Secularists, but Republicans, there is a third great obstacle, the Throne, which is now little else than a costly sham. Yet, sham as it is, it is still strong to obstruct, being encompassed and fortified by the power of the nobles, the power of the clergy, the power of the wealthy, the degraded and degrading snobbishness of the middle and lower middle classes. The artisans and laborers generally, as we know, care nothing for it or are distinctly hostile. We have had some great monarchs, though the greatest we ever had was crown-less, and we can yield to monarchy in the past something of such historical respect as we yield to Christianity. But who that is not a very serf by nature can feel any genuine respect for monarchy as we have it in these days? when the main duty of the King or Queen is to countersign the decrees of Parliament; a duty which the Lord Chancellor or the Speaker could perform just as well and with more promptitude. One need not dwell on the character of the reigning house, which, brought ignobly to the throne, has been consistently ignoble from the first until the accession of her present Most Gracious Majesty. A much nobler royal family would be just as superfluous now as the present we have outgrown the need of a paternal or guardian king. Nor is the question of principle really affected by the fact that this ignoble family, like other species of the lower animals, is excessively prolific, and that every prince or princess born of it, costs us several thousands a year. We should not grudge the money for service rendered; the gravamen of our impeachment is that no monarch now can render service of value. The effective energy of our monarchy in these days is well symbolised in the procedure at the opening of Parliament—royal carriages without royal occupants; royal life-guards with no royal life to guard; a royal robe spread on a vacant throne; the Lord Chancellor reading a royal speech composed by responsible ministers. Her Majesty during fourteen long years has been doing her best to teach us how well we can get on without a monarch, and how stupid we are therefore to keep one at a great expense. We may find something venerable in the throne when put aside and conserved simply as a curious relic of the past; we find it merely absurd while retained for useless use, a pretentious seat with no one to sit in it. As Théophile says: “_Si rien nest plus beau que l’antique, est plus laid que le suranné._”

MR. KINGSLEY’S CONVERTITES

(1865.)

Readers can scarcely have forgotten the amusing “turn-up” between the Rev. Mr. Kingsley and the Rev. Dr. Newman, in which the latter got the former “into Chancery,” and punished him so pitilessly. While reading the “Apologia pro Vitâ Sua,” one naturally reflected now and then upon the opinions, as stated in the books, of Dr. Newman’s antagonist; and the fight grew more and more comically exquisite as one gradually learnt the thorough agreement at bottom of the two who were struggling so fiercely at top. When I speak of Mr. Kingsley’s books, I mean his novels and romances, all of which (except the one not yet completely published) I have duly read and enjoyed. As for certain collections of sermons, a dialogue for loose thinkers, a _jeu d’esprit_ on the Pentateuch, together with various trifles by way of lectures on history and philosophy, I confess that none of these have I ever even attempted to peruse. To palliate this sin of omission I can only urge the high probability that a man of Mr. Kingsley’s character must find much more vigorous and ample expression in a free and easy novel than in any didactic or argumentative treatise, with its wearisome requirements of consecutiveness and cramping limitations of logic. I now ask the leaders of the _National Reformer_ to accompany me in a general review of his romances, because I think that such a review will develop two or three facts seldom noticed in the critiques—whether friendly or adverse—that abound upon his writings. Especially, I think that it will be found that the popular phrases, “Muscular Christianity” and “Broad Church,” by no means sufficiently characterise his religious tendency; and that, with all the superficial unlikeness, almost amounting to perfect contrast between him and Dr. Newman, the opponents as religious men are fundamentally alike in this—that their respective creeds satisfy, or appear to satisfy, in the same manner the same peculiarly intense want in their several natures.

In every one of Mr. Kingsley’s romances there is a chief personage, more or less naturally good but decidedly godless at the beginning, god-fearing and saintly at the end. Some of the romances have each two or three of these convertites, the throes of whose regeneration are the principal “motives” of the most striking scenes, and may be thus fairly said to furnish the plot and passion of the book. My present object is not aesthetic, and I therefore need not argue the question whether narratives thus constructed can have any claim to rank as genuine works of art. With the melancholy Jaques in “As You Like It,” I believe:

Out of these Convertites
There is much matter to be heard and learned—

so will stay “to see no pastime, I,” but run through the stories of these conversions, touching only the most salient points.

Alton Locke, when adolescent, is a very poor tailor, a poet whose verses are far more vigorous than his character, a chartist, a sceptic. He madly falls in love with a Dean’s daughter, and through the patronage of the Dean himself, gets a volume of poems published. As the fiercest of the rhymes have been soothed out of this volume by the decorous Dean, Radical friends forward to young Locke a pair of plush-breeches—fitting testimonial to the flunkeyism conspicuous in the omissions. He is imprisoned for inciting a rustic mob to a Chartist outbreak, confounds the prison chaplain by sporting the latest novelties in heresy direct from Germany, shares when released in the delirium of the memorable tenth of April, finds that the lady of his love is to be married to his cousin, and consummates the long orgy of excitement with a desperate fever. The Dean had directed his attention to the study of natural history; hence the frenzy of the fever takes a zoological turn, and he undergoes therein marvellous transmigrations through a series of antediluvian monsters; awaking at last to sane consciousness (_sane comparatively, he is never quite in his right senses, poor fellow_) to find himself nursed by a young widow, the dean’s elder daughter, who soothes him with ladings from Tennyson. She has very recently lost her husband, who was merely a brilliant nobleman, and she herself a Convertite; in a few days the modest Alton is hinting at a declaration to her. She will not marry him, nor indeed any other man, but she sends him out to South America on a special poetical mission. On the voyage thither he dies, a believer, regenerate, leaving as legacy to his friends and the world at large a war-song of the Church (ferociously) Militant. What has converted him?—the plush breeches? the crash of the tenth of April? the loss of his first lady love? the reading of the “Lotus-eaters?” the delirious Fugue of Fossils? Some or all of these it must be supposed; for weak though he was, he surely could not have been seriously influenced by the comical caricatures of Socratic dialectics, which the Dean sometimes played with him in lieu of chess or backgammon.

Next comes Yeast, whose great Convertite is Lancelot Smith. He is introduced to us as fresh from Cambridge, a stalwart gallant fellow of great abilities, rather debauched, but discontented with his debauchery, and utterly without fixed creed. An accident confines him long to the house of the Squire whom he is visiting. During his convalescence he becomes a lover of one of the Squire’s daughters—a young lady whose vernacular name is Argemone, and who is herself rapidly growing a perfect saint. He also becomes the friend of a gamekeeper who reads Carlyle, writes poetry, and has experienced special religious illumination. Lancelot then loses all his fortune by the failure of his uncle’s bank, and loses his sweetheart by the sulphuretted-hydrogen fever; turns street-porter for the nonce to earn a bit of bread, and finally goes off one knows not whither; an excellent fervid Christian, after playing through several bewildering pages a wild burlesque of the Platonic dialogue with a personage so mysterious that I prefer not to attempt a description of him. What has converted Lancelot? The loss of his money and the death of his sweetheart seem to have been the main influences. For although he was stunned with calamity, I will not deem him so stupefied as to think that he was made a believer by the unintelligible dialogue.

Then follows Hypatia. And here I may remark that I am unable to concur in what seems the general opinion—namely, that Mr. Kingsley intended his heroine to represent the character of the Hypatia of history. Although living in the same city at the same period, both lecturing on philosophy, and both ultimately murdered by Christian mobs; it appears to me that, as women, the two Hypatias differed so much from each other that no one having heard them talk for five minutes could have the slightest doubt as to which was which. History and Mr. Kingsley have each composed an acrostic on this lovely name, and with the same _bouts rimes_; but the body (and the spirit) of the one poem is extremely unlike the body (and the spirit) of the other. Mr. Kingsley proffers us an ancient cup and a flask, Greek-lettered “Wine of Cyprus”; we commence to drink solemnly and devoutly, but—O most miserable mockery! it is indubitable brandy and water. Well may he call this an old foe with a new face! The Kingsley Hypatia is not altogether, but is very nearly a Convertite; so nearly that he would certainly have made her altogether one, had not the _bouts rime’s_ been too well known for alteration. Her best pupil (of whom more anon) abandons her, she begins to love a beautiful young Greek monk, and yet (that philosophy may have the help of worldly power in its mortal duel with Christianity) consents to marry the Prefect of Alexandria, whom she very justly despises. While miserable with the consciousness of how low she is stooping to conquer, she is fascinated or mesmerised by an old Jewish hag, and crouches in a sort of fetish worship to what she thinks a statue of Apollo, said statue being represented by the handsome monk. In the agony of shame which follows her discovery of this cheat she performs a short parody of the Socratic dialogue in concert with the pupil who had left her and who has returned a Christian, and at last, when going to the lecture hall (where murder shall prevent her from ever lecturing more) she confesses to a certain longing for Christianity. Why? She was wretched, humiliated, defeated, weary; she had staked all on the red, and had lost—what more natural than a yearning to try the black? And this character is published and generally received for the Hypatia of history!

But the great Convertite of this romance is the pupil already mentioned, the renegade Jew, Raphael Ben Ezra. In the prime of life, wealthy, the favorite comrade of the Prefect, superlatively gifted with that subtle Hebrew clearness, which, swayed by a strong will and intense self-love, can scarcely be distinguished from genius, we find him in the opening chapters already as used up as the old King Solomon of Ecclesiastes, having exhausted all excitements of wine, women, and philosophy, all voluptuousness, physical and intellectual. Desperate with _ennui_, he abandons Hypatia, casts away his wealth (how many Jews do the same!), barters clothes with a beggar, and sets out to wander the world with an amiable British bull-bitch (afterwards the happy mother of nine sweet infants) for his sole guide, philosopher and friend. The chapter wherein his Pyrrhonism disported itself “on the floor of the bottomless” seems to have been, in great measure, borrowed from the talk of one Babbalanja in Herman Melville’s “Mardi;” perhaps, however, both were borrowed direct from Jean Paul’s gigantic grotesque, “Titan.” Becoming involved in the meshes of the great war in Africa—that revolt of Heraclian against Honorius which Gibbon treats with such contemptuous brevity in his thirty-first chapter—he is nearly killed himself, saves an old officer from death and soon falls in love with this officer’s daughter. He reads about this time certain epistles, and infers therefrom that Saul of Tarsus was one of the finest gentlemen that ever lived. Also, while the guest of good Bishop Synesius, he hears Saint Augustine preach, and engages with him in long discussions, fortunately unreported. Returning to Alexandria, he almost converts Hypatia, sees her murdered, sharpens his tongue on Cyril the primate, and leaves again to marry his saintly sweetheart, and end his lire as quite a model Christian. What has converted him? His love for the young Christian? the gentlemanly character of Paul’s Epistles? the bull-bitch with her ninefold litter, like Shakespere’s nightmare? the murder of Hypatia by the Christians, who rent, and tore and shred her living body to fragments? Or was it mere satiety and weariness of thinking—the weariness which leads so many who thought freely when young to find a resting-place in the bosom of the Church as they get old?

In “Westward, Ho!” the great conversion is of Ayacanorah. But as this is a conversion not merely religious but also moral, social and intellectual, a conversion from barbarism to civilisation, it does not come fairly into the class I am describing. Two incidents in the romance, however, must not be passed over. The first occurs in the Lotus-eating chapter. Will Para-combe tired, as well he may be, of wandering about savage America in search of El Dorado, blindly refuses to see that it is his chief end as man to continue wandering until El Dorado is found and the captain has glutted his heart with vengeance on the Spaniards; and Will gives such excellent reasons for staying in the beautiful spot where he is, with the beautiful and affectionate native woman whom he is willing and anxious to marry in the most legal mode attainable, that Captain Amyas Leigh, who has been urging him onward with true Kingsleyan diffidence and mildness, finds himself dumbfounded. But valuable logical assistance is at hand. A jaguar like a bar of iron plunges on poor Will, and he and his arguments are settled on the spot. Amyas thanks God for this special interposition of providence in his favor. And the man who wrote the adventure of Amyas can sneer at the faith of a Catholic like Dr. Newman! The other incident is the conversion of Amyas from his diabolical hatred of the Spaniards in general, and of the Don with whom Rose had eloped in particular. A lightning-flash strikes him blind, and he thereupon repents him of his hatred and desire of revenge, and, moreover, has a vision of the Don drowned with his sunken galleon, who assures him that his hatred was without just cause. These are the true Kingsleyan dialectics; these, and not those burlesques of what Plato wrote and Socrates spoke, and Mr. Kingsley is no more able to conduct than I am to lead on the violin like Herr Joachim, a great concerted composition of Beethoven. Let a jaguar loose into your opponent’s syllogistic premises, blind him with a lightning-flash that he may see the truth and have clear vision of the right way. Yet Mr. Kingsley has undoubtedly read about a tower in Siloam that fell, and what Joshua Bar-Joseph said of the people killed by this accident.

Lastly, we have “Two Years Ago,” whose great Convertite is Tom Thumal. Tom is one of the jolliest of characters, true as steel, tough as oak, quick and deft for all emergencies, a compact mass of common sense, and courage, and energy, living in the most godless state, He is not a heathen—he is more godless yet; for a heathen has something of wood or stone which serves him for a deity. In the Saga of Saint Olaf (in that great and glorious work “The Heims-kringla”) we read how this pious and terrible king going to his last battle was asked by two brothers, who were freebooters, for permission to fight in his ranks. But although these and their followers were “tall” men, and the king was in sore need of recruits, he would not accept their services unless they believed in Christ. Whereupon they answered that they saw no special need of the help of the “White Christ”; that they had been hitherto wont to believe in themselves and their own luck, and with this belief had managed to pull through very well, and thought they could do the same for the future. Ultimately, these excellent fellows did consent to be baptised and called Christians—not from any religious motive, alas! but only because of a “shtrong wakeness” they had for taking part in a set battle. Tom Thurnal has just as much, and as little, religion as these had. After wandering all over the world in all sorts of capacities, he comes back to be shipwrecked on the Cornish coast, and is the only one on board saved. While he is being dragged up the beach senseless, his belt of money—the fruit of a season at the Australian diggings—disappears; and he resolves to settle in the village, in order to discover it or the thief. Here he falls in love with the village schoolmistress, a sweet mystical devotee, whom he rather suspects of stealing his gold, and whom he defends from one ruffian in order to grossly insult her himself. In the village Tom is doctor, and, when the cholera comes, he is assisted in bringing the village through it by this saintly schoolmistress, and a pious Major, and a fervid High Church parson. At the breaking out of the Crimean War, Tom gets charged with a secret mission to the East. Somewhere in Turkey, in Asia, an imbecile Sheikh or Pasha whom he is endeavoring to serve, mistakes his manœuvres, and keeps him in captivity for a year or two. From this imprisonment he comes home crushed and abject, “afraid in passing a house that it would fall and smother him,” etc., marries his sweetheart and ends a model Christian. What has converted him? Simply, it appears, the year or two of solitary confinement—which took all the pith and manhood out of him. This last case, the work of Mr. Kingsley in the full maturity of his powers, is the most flagrant of all.

If I have not summed up these cases fairly, the novels and romances in question are in everybody’s hands to convict me of the unfairness. I have simply sketched the leading points as they remain in my memory, not referring to the books again to pick out what would best serve my purpose. It is not my fault if the personages, who looked so great and grandiose in the flowing and ample draperies of romance, do not strip well for anatomy.

Now, what is common to all these cases of conversion? This: that the characters become religious, not when healthy, but when diseased; the religion in every case is exhibited as a drug for the sick, not as wholesome food for the healthy. While you are sane, well and hearty, doing your work in the world deftly, sound in mind, and wind, and limb, and fairly prosperous, you have no need of this religion—you can get through the world very well without it. But when your fortune is lost, your sweetheart dead or married to another, your courage cowed, your heart broken, your mind diseased, your self-respect humiliated, then you long for and embrace Christianity (or whatever religion is dominant around you): it is a soft pillow for the aching head, a tender couch for the bruised body, a flattering nurse for the desolate invalid. I can scarcely add that it is a medicine for the sickness, for its medicinal virtues are hardly shown; but it is, at any rate, as we read of its effects in these books, a narcotic and an anodyne for restlessness and pain. It is a religion to die with, not to live with. All these things, so soothing and beneficial to the invalid, are nauseous and noxious to the healthy.

A man could no more live vigorous life on such religion than he could live vigorous life couched tenderly, pillowed softly, nursed assiduously, and drugged with narcotics and anodyne all the days of his life.

Is the religious world willing to accept this view of religion? It would seem so by the remarkable popularity of these books. This view may be correct or incorrect, wise or foolish; at any rate, it is strangely at variance with the view commonly ascribed to “Muscular Christians,” and strangely identical with that which Dr. Newman explicitly avows in the most eloquent pages of his “Apologia.” People generally consider “Muscular Christianity” as a clever and cheerful improvement on the old solemn ascetic Christianity, as a doctrine which fully recognises the goodness of the common world and common worldly life, as a liberal cultus which does not sacrifice body to soul any more than soul to body, but is at once gymnastic and spiritualistic in its “exercises”; a vague notion is abroad that, whereas the early religion of Christ and his apostles was of sorrow and suffering, this, its latest development, is a religion of happiness and health; in short, it is believed that “Muscular Christianity” has added the Gospel(1) of the body and this life to the primitive Gospel of the soul and the next life: and yet the most popular and vigorous writer of this new school, after exhausting a very fertile imagination in the suggestion of methods and modes by which godless sinners may be converted to godliness, has absolutely found no other process effectual than this of showering upon them misfortunes, humiliations, afflictions, calamities (such as do not in real life fall upon one human being in a thousand, and working results such as they would not work in one real human being out of ten thousand); until health and hope, self-respect and the capacity for sane joy are altogether destroyed in them, the manhood and womanhood overwhelmed and crushed out of them; after which he brings in these miserable wrecks and relics of what were once men and women as all that he can contribute to the extension of the Church, which ought to be the cheerful congregation of wholesome men and women throughout the world, the richest flower and ripest fruit of humanity. If the Church of the future is to be composed of creatures like Mr. Kingsley’s Convertites, Westminster Abbey must be turned into a Grand Chartreuse, and St. Paul’s into an Hospital for Incurables, and the metropolitan Cathedral of England must be Bedlam.

1. The Gospel of the body and this life has been powerfully
preached in the most explicit terms on the Continent. In England
we have been too prudish to advocate it so clearly, although it
is, of course, essential to the most enlightened Positivism and
Secularism. That much-abused book the “Elements of Social
Science” preaches it with more thoroughness, knowledge and
ability than any other English work I have met with. I do not
pretend to be wise enough to judge this book, and so far as I
can judge it, I differ from it in many respects; but on the
broad question of the spirit in which it is written, I do not
fear to assert that no honest and intelligent man can find
pruriency and impurity in it, without he brings the pruriency
and impurity in his own heart and mind to the study of it. I can
understand ascetic Christians abhorring it, I can understand
timid Freethinkers being frightened by it because they are
timid; but I cannot understand men who claim to be bold and
honest Freethinkers avoiding it as an unholy thing merely
because of the subjects it treats, without reference to the mode
of treatment, and without sympathy for the admirable motives
which manifestly incited the author. He may well say with the
most brilliant and daring of all who have preached this Gospel
of the body in our age (this Gospel which is so sorely needed to
complement and modify the exclusive Gospel of the soul—this
Gospel which Plato preached along with the other, while Jesus
preached the other only), he may well say with Heine

Doch die Castraten Klagten,
Aïs ich meine Stimm’ erhob;
Sie Klagten und sie sagten;
Ich sange veil zu grob.

THE PRIMATE ON THE CHURCH AND THE WORLD

(1876.)

The Archbishop of Canterbury is making his second quadrennial visitation to his diocese, and delivering an elaborate Charge to the clergy, in seven instalments. Of these the first two are reported at considerable length in the _Times_ of the 27th and 28th inst., a couple of columns of small print being given to each. The _Times_ has moreover generously vouchsafed a leading article of encouragement and approval on each; and surely the State Church ought to be proud of such lofty patronage, and Lambeth Palace ought to be very grateful to Printing House Square. The _Daily News_ could only spare half a column for the first; and the _Daily Telegraph_, whose exuberant Christianity, hot and strong as boiling rancid oil, amazes the world on every great festival of the Church, showed its estimate of the importance of our Primate’s manifesto by allotting to it eight or nine lines of small print at the foot of a column—a pickpocket in a police-court gets as much notice.

Let us glance down the _Times_’ reports, pausing at anything worth a note if not by its intrinsic value yet on account of the position of the speaker:—

“I wish to set before you some thoughts as to the particular duties, which at this time devolve upon the Established Church as the National Church of this country. In the days in which we live some even hesitate to assign to us the position of a National Church. A National Church is a national protest for God and for Christ, for goodness and for truth; and if we of this National Church are not making this national protest, no one else certainly makes one. No other body in this country can claim that commanding influence over the thought of the age, which by God’s blessing is assigned to us. No other religious body in the country has either that connection with the State, or if that be thought a small matter, that power of influencing the whole nation which, thank God, is still reserved to us.”

It will be noticed that the Archbishop in his definition of a National Church has humbly copied the unorthodox Matthew Arnold, who in his address to London clergymen at Sion College, (reviewed in the _Secularist_ of April 8) declared with an exquisitely humorous gravity that he regarded the Church of England as _a great national society for the promotion of goodness!_ But the Archbishop is really too loose in his imitation of this charitable definition bestowed by a man of letters. He says: “A National Church is a national protest for God and for Christ;” according to which, Mohammedanism, Brahmanism, and Buddhism, as the national churches of several countries, are so many national protests for God and Christ. We do not expect a mere Primate in these days to write with the precision of an accomplished literary man, but we do think that he ought to be somewhat less inaccurate than this. However, it is to the last two sentences quoted that I would particularly call attention. The Church of England has a commanding influence over the thought of the age! It has the power of influencing the whole nation! Here be truly astonishing announcements. The thought of the age in our country is embodied in such persons as Spencer and Darwin, Huxley and Tyndall, Carlyle and Browning, George Eliot and George Meredith; and what a commanding influence the State Church has over these! As for its influence over the whole nation, is it not the fact that a large portion of the educated classes, and the great bulk 01 the artisans, are either sceptical or indifferent, and that more than a half of the shopkeepers are Nonconformists bent on Disestablishment and Disendowment? The Archbishop has made a most unlucky start.

Passing over some commonplace and common-sense remarks on the duties of the clergy, we come to the following:—

“This is an age in which there is a great deal of uneasy thought seething throughout the nation. It is a time when, more than any other, serious and earnest learning is required to meet the wants of those among whom we live. Let us be thankful that the arrangements of cathedral bodies do provide quiet places where men may follow a studious course, and cause their light to be seen throughout the land, guiding the thought of those who are in need of guidance in this anxious age.”

Admitting the truth of the opening sentences we may add that in every age since the supremacy of the Church was first shaken by the invention of printing, the recovery of the Greek and Latin classics, and the revival of science, there has been a great deal of uneasy thought seething throughout this nation and every other nation in Christendom, and that age by age this seething has scalded more and more pitilessly the dogmas, the Scriptures, and the authority of the Church, whose Hebrew old clothes, as Carlyle fitly calls them, must soon be literally boiled to rags. We may also freely admit that the arrangements of Cathedral bodies do provide quiet places where men may follow a studious course; but we ask, how many of them really pursue it? How many of them cause their light to shine throughout the land? How many guide the thought of those who need guidance in this anxious age? Is it not as notorious as it is disgraceful to the Church, that, with few exceptions, the canons and other dignitaries make scarcely any contribution to the thought, or scholarship, or science of the age, in return for the large leisure and ample stipends with which they are endowed? These stalled canons may ruminate much, even like stalled oxen, but what nourishment do we get from the rumination of the former? Look through lists of standard works, of really important works, published during the last quarter of a century, and see how few of them, even in theology and kindred departments, have come from the “learned leasure” of our rich cathedrals.

If there is one thing more closely connected than any other with true religion, that thing is money. Always the most spiritual exhortations and speculations end in very practical appeals to the pockets—of course the pockets of the laity. We are reminded what Paul Louis Courier said of the clergy in his day: “They have need of good examples and will find them amongst us. But if we are stronger than they as to the commandments of God, they in their turn have the advantage of us in respect to the commandments of the Church, which they remember better than we, and of which the principal is, I believe, to give all we have for heaven. ‘You ask me,’ said that worthy preacher Barlette, ‘how to get to Paradise? The bells of the convent tell you: Giving, giving, giving,’ The Latin of the monk is charming: “Vos quœritis a me, fratres carissimi, quomodo itur ad paradisupi? Hoc dicunt vobis campance monasterii, dando, dando, dando” Very early in his discourse does our Primate ring this favorite chime of all church bells, but with a noble disinterestedness, a magnanimous depreciation:—

“We may think lightly of the vast sums of money which of late years have been poured into the treasury of the Established Church for the re-edification of our buildings; we may think lightly even of the vast sums which have been contributed by the members of our Church for the instruction of our poorer brethren, thinking that, after all, it is not the silver and the gold, but the precious doctrine of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the purity and holiness which attend the true profession of that doctrine on which we have to rest our claims. But still even the outward signs of the influence which God has given us are not to be despised.”

“We may think lightly of the vast sums of money!” we, the archbishop with £15,000 a year and a palace rent-free, and the members of the Cathedral body of Canterbury each with our several hundreds a year and our snug residences! Very lightly, no doubt! But “still even the outward signs of the influence which God has given us are not to be despised.” How unworldly, how humble, is our right reverend father in God; it is a pity that his voice here has such a twang of Pecksniff and Uriah Heap. I really believe that he is too much of a gentleman to speak in this tone with his natural voice; it is that fatal falsetto of the pulpit. Well, in sober truth, these Churchmen had better not despise the outward signs of their influence, for there is an abundant lack of inward ones. And discreetly do they boast of the re-edification of their buildings, for edification or re-edification of their congregations, alas, there is little or none whereof to boast. Having rang this preliminary diffident chime of Dando dando, dando, the Archbishop revels in riotous peals to the same words before concluding:—

“Depend upon it a country that produces in a short time £30,000,000 [sic in _Times; Daily News_, ‘three millions’] to restore the outward fabric of our churches, will not fail to respond to any appeal when made for the funds which may be wanted to assist those who otherwise cannot provide themselves with a due education that they may be fitted for the ministry. Another matter which I think presses upon us is this. Is it not desirable something should be done to provide the means of passing their last days in comfort, for those worn out in the service of Christ? Here again I feel confident that an appeal to the wealthy of this country would be answered at once if those who have the leisure—none more fit than the dignitaries of our cathedral churches—were to take up this question, and to our existing charities might well be added some means of supplementing the resources and meeting the wants of the poorer clergy. I visited yesterday the Clergy Orphan School. I was informed that that school was perfectly full—more full than it had ever been before—and still there were twice as many applicants for admission as there were places to admit them to. Does not this show it is very desirable we should all of us direct our efforts to see that the charity of our fellow-Churchmen should be appealed to, to assist in the education of the orphan children of our clergy, and not only the orphan children?”

Our fellow Christians, the laymen, having laid for us three million golden eggs in a short time (the lavish geese!) will not fail to give us more to educate young men for the ministry; and more yet to pension our worn-out clergy; and more yet again to educate the children, orphan and not orphan, of our clergy. We archbishop and bishops, dean and chapter, are so poor, so poor, so very very poor, that we can do nothing at all for any of these miserable clerical critters; the whole revenues of our State Church are so insignificant that they are quite inadequate to provide decently for its ministers! But we know well that our dear, good, stupid, unedified lay brethren and sisters will give all the out-door relief we have the impudence to ask; will educate our young and pension our old; marching ever briskly heavenwards to that cheerfulest church chime: Giving, giving, giving; Dando, dando, dando! Does not our Archbishop rival or outrival that worthy preaching monk, Barlette? Here I must pause, but shall have to return again to the Charge, which threatens to be a heavy charge indeed to the purses of the richer and more foolish members of our impoverished State Church.

SPIRITISM IN THE POLICE COURT

(1876.)